Cosmopath - [Bengal Station 03]

by Eric Brown

  She tapped the code Jeff had given her into her handset and waited, heart thudding. Seconds later the screen flared, flashed with static, then resolved.

  Jeff’s lean, dark face looked out at her. He smiled. “Su...”

  “Jeff.” She choked on a sob. “Great to see you.”

  “How’s Li?”

  She nodded. “She began treatment this morning. She’s in a big machine - like an industrial washing machine. You wouldn’t believe it. Dr Grant’s happy with how things are going. It’s after eleven now. She’ll be unconscious until six.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the hospital café, grabbing a drink. I think I’ll go and fetch Pham from school, take her out for lunch.” She smiled. “Anyway, what’s the planet like?”

  He returned her smile. “Christ, Su, I love you,” he said. “Can’t wait to get back. But Delta Cephei VII... It’s like a big fungus farm. Look.” The image on her metacarpal screen swayed as Jeff moved to a viewscreen and positioned his handset so that she could see out.

  “Weird!” she said, staring at a rolling landscape of orange fungus and strange, sprouting mushrooms.

  Jeff said, “It’s early. I’ve just got up. Today’s the day...”

  “Oh...!” She felt suddenly guilty that she’d forgotten all about the reason for Jeff’s being on Delta Cephei VII. “You’re reading the dead engineer...”

  He nodded. “In a few hours.”

  “Does anyone know what happened to the crew?”

  “Not yet, Su.”

  “But you aren’t in danger, are you, Jeff?”

  He smiled. “No, of course not.”

  She felt a quick stab of relief. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

  “Thanks. It’ll be fine, once it’s over. I’ll call you tonight, okay?”

  She nodded. “I’m missing you, Jeff. Wish you were here. I want to hold you.”

  “Missing you too, but I’ll soon be back.”

  “Oh - by the way, I saw Dr Rao yesterday, and guess what?”

  She spent the next ten minutes telling him about Rao’s job offer, and discussing whether she should take it. Jeff said why not, which pleased her, and said they’d talk it over when he got back.

  They chatted on, Sukara reluctant to break the link and be alone again. Ten minutes later, listening to Jeff describe the sunsets and the quick-growing fungus, she felt herself welling up. She wanted to tell him how horrible it was here without him, and how the last few hours had been hell... but the last thing she wanted was to set him worrying. Instead she sighed, told Jeff she loved him, and said she’d better say goodbye now and go for Pham.

  He blew her a kiss and cut the connection.

  She sat for a while, gazing at his still image, then turned off her handset. She finished her tea without tasting it, staring across the park to the open-ended west side of the Station: the sea scintillated, and a warm wind blew in across the grass, laden with the scent of jasmine and bougainvillaea.

  She quit the café and took the long, curving path through the park. She had hardly left the shadow of the hospital when she heard a shout from behind her.

  A young Chinese orderly in a white tunic was chasing after her. “Miz Sukara!” he cried again.

  She stared at him. “What is it?”

  He caught up with her, panting, and pointed at her handset. “You were talking, so we couldn’t get through. But I saw you in the café...”

  She felt dizzy. “What’s wrong?”

  He looked straight into her eyes. “It’s your daughter, Li. I’m afraid she’s taken a turn for the worse. Dr Grant wants to see you.”

  Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed, tasting the acidic liquid. Her vision misted, but she managed to follow the orderly back through the grounds of the hospital.

  “This way,” he said, taking her arm and hurrying her past the entrance towards a service lift on the outside of the building. “It’s quicker.”

  He palmed a sensor and the door opened. She stepped inside, resisting the urge to break down and cry out loud; it was ridiculous, but she felt that she had to maintain her composure before this complete stranger.

  He thumbed a panel and the lift jerked into motion.

  Too late, she realised that something was wrong. The lift was going down...

  “But...?” she said, turning to the orderly.

  He smiled at her, raised something, and sprayed it in her face.

  And a second later Sukara lost consciousness.

  * * * *

  THIRTEEN

  REVELATION

  Vaughan was woken early by Sukara’s call. He chatted to her, cheered by the illusion that she was close by, then cut the connection, slipped from his cabin and left the ship.

  Delta Cephei rose at his back, sending his long shadow sprawling before him across the fungal valley floor. His earlier curiosity about the coloration of the fungus at night-time was now answered: by some effect of photochemical synthesis it had reverted to its default cream hue during darkness. Now, with the appearance of the sun, it began the slow change, turning chartreuse as he watched.

  The landscape had undergone a transformation while he’d slept, too. The valley floor had hunched itself, so that, instead of providing a flat plane between the Kali and theMussoree, a slight hillock had appeared. A thousand smaller growths had sprouted across the plane; these resembled conventional Terran mushrooms, but knee high, with thick boles and gaudy crimson parasols. The drones had been busy during the night, cropping the fungus from around the ships to create two deep, waterless moats.

  Vaughan walked up the hillock between the ships. A mushroom, much taller than the others, had sprouted on the crest, and he sat down with his back against its sturdy trunk, sick at the thought of what the day would bring.

  He thought of Namura’s abduction, and wondered if he were in danger here. The aliens had used their knowledge of the fungal terrain to snatch her and escape. They could do the same now, he thought, create an opening, take him, and vanish down the aperture before it closed up. He slipped a hand inside his shirt and gripped the butt of his laser.

  As he sat, a tall hatch in the side of the Kali opened, and seconds later a flier hovered out. Six security guards sat in the open-topped vehicle, each one gripping a rifle. The flier settled on the ground and from the ship trooped a procession of drones. One by one the silver spiders crawled over the flier, retracted their telescopic limbs and clamped themselves to its flank like so many metallic barnacles. The flier rose ten metres and set off away from the ship; it made a circuit of the cordoned area, then headed towards a distant range of what might have been mountains or just another fungal outcropping. Vaughan watched as it dwindled to a dot in the distance and was lost to sight.

  He saw movement behind the viewscreens along the flank of the Kali: the tiny figures of the crew going about their business. A team of scientists came down the ramp, accompanied by armed guards, and set up a spindly drilling rig. McIntosh was with them, though he stood off to one side and cast a long glance around the area as if searching for clues to his lover’s whereabouts.

  Vaughan watched as the scientists bored through the fungal mantle, reading from softscreens and making hushed comments to their handsets as the experiment progressed.

  He wondered about the dead - or, technically, the dying - engineer aboard the Mussoree. He’d lain awake during the long night thinking about reading her mind. The thing to do, to preserve his sanity, would be to skim her most recent memories as her consciousness dwindled away to the terrible end-point of oblivion. Her last recollections of her time on Delta Cephei VII were what Chandrasakar was eager to know about anyway; Vaughan would avoid delving too deep, miring himself in her personality, her memories of family and loved ones, her joys and regrets.

  He closed his eyes as the sun warmed him, and after a sleepless night he must have dozed. He lucid dreamed of Sukara and the girls, and was startled, some time later, by a voice calling his name.

  “Jeff?
When you’re ready...”

  He shook his head, waking to find himself on the weird surface of an alien world, the images of Sukara receding rapidly.

  Chandrasakar was standing at the foot of the incline, flanked by the medic, Pavelescu, and the head of security, Singh.

  The tycoon waved. “If you’d care to accompany us across to the Mussoree...”Like a condemned man he stood and joined the trio. Chandrasakar nodded a greeting. “The engineer will come out of suspension in approximately fifteen minutes.” He hesitated. “I don’t envy you what you have to do, Jeff. I know it must be hell, but I hope you realise its importance, especially in light of Namura’s abduction?”

  Vaughan nodded. “It’s what I signed up to do, isn’t it?” He sounded needlessly petulant, even to his own ears, and regretted it.

  “Well, let’s get it over with.” They approached the ramp of the Mussoree and entered the ship. A complement of guards snapped to attention as Chandrasakar passed, and Vaughan caught sight of perhaps half a dozen security drones lurking in corners, scurrying across walls and ceilings.

  The Mussoree was a small ship, and it wasn’t long before they reached the cryo-suspension chamber. Singh remained outside the sliding door, and Chandrasakar and Vaughan stepped into a v-shaped room with pods built into the sloping walls to left and right. Three of the pods were vacant but the fourth held the dim shape of the engineer behind a frosted crystal cover.

  Three technicians sat around the pod, consulting softscreens jacked into the suspension unit. One of them looked up and nodded to Chandrasakar as they entered the chamber.

  The others eyed Vaughan with expressions which combined pity and distaste, as if he were being led to the gallows.

  Two of the techs stood and slipped from the room, leaving Pavelescu and the head technician to deal with the job of decanting the dying engineer.

  Chandrasakar stood by the door, his expression neutral.

  The tech tapped a code on his softscreen and the crystal cover cracked with a loud hiss. A cloud of escaping cold air filled the chamber, as if it were the woman’s premature ghost. The rack on which the engineer was lying slid forwards and levelled out.

  The first thing that Vaughan noticed was the wound that disfigured the side of the woman’s head: something had removed a section of her skull above her temple. The second thing he saw, with a jolting shock, was that she was Asian, small, slim, and serene-featured. A sudden involuntary sadness rose in him.

  Pavelescu inserted a catheter into her jugular, tapped something into a softscreen, and nodded to Vaughan. “She’s all yours.”

  Then he and the technician backed off and stood respectfully like morticians in the presence of a grieving loved one. A monitor on the tech’s softscreen bleeped faintly as it recorded the woman’s fading consciousness.

  Vaughan slipped onto a seat beside the rack. He tried not to look at the woman’s face - she looked ridiculously young, perhaps twenty, too young for her life to have ended like this - and he considered, fleetingly, duping Chandrasakar. He could always simulate the reading, concoct some story about her being too far gone for her memories to be accessible, and the tycoon would be none the wiser. He thought about it, then tapped the enable code into his handset. To abdicate the responsibility merely to save his own pain would be a dereliction of duty. He owed it to the engineer to find out who or what had killed her - and perhaps along the way learn what had happened to her colleagues and to Kiki Namura.

  He closed his eyes and found himself, involuntarily, reaching for the woman’s cold hand. He gripped it as he sent out a probe towards her shattered sensorium.

  He ceased, for a terrible few seconds, to be wholly Jeff Vaughan. Despite his best intentions he was unable to shield himself from the fact of the woman’s identity. She invaded him, her awareness of herself overcame him in a great wave, taking his breath away and flooding him with unwanted thoughts and memories, fears and regrets.

  He struggled to gain purchase on her most recent thoughts, while battling to ignore who and what she was, which was impossible.

  Patti Yuan... twenty-three... on her third mission for the Chandrasakar Line; she had a lover...

  Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.

  Her lover was a woman called Jenny Grendle, the pilot-geologist aboard the Mussoree.

  Vaughan was rocked by a blast of grief, and the sudden image of what had happened to Jenny Grendle.

  He gripped the woman’s hand all the tighter, his other hand grasping the edge of the slide-bed. Eyes still closed, he cried out. He felt someone’s hand on his shoulder.

  He wanted to pull back, retreat from the dark and terrible vortex that was Patti’s dying psyche. But he knew he had to continue. He battled to order her thoughts, to cast about through the shattered and fragmenting images and piece together the crew’s last few hours on Delta Cephei VII.

  He caught an image, followed it, despite the woman’s pain, and experienced reality through the eyes, the mind, of Patti Yuan.

  As per regulations, the crew had monitored the area around the ship before two of them - a biologist and mineralogist - donned atmosphere suits as a precaution and ventured out.

  Patti and her lover Jenny remained aboard the ship, in radio contact with the others.

  Vaughan concentrated; visually it was like watching an image on a defective holo-screen which kept breaking up, fragmenting; Patti Yuan’s emotions underwent a similar dysfunction, both the result of her injuries and the fact that she was gradually, inevitably, dying.

  Skip to: a cry in Patti’s earpiece. The biologist, Gonzalez, had seen something: movement, a scurrying figure behind a sprouting fungal stalk.

  Skip to: another cry. They were under attack, Gonzalez yelled, being fired upon by green humanoids. Henderson was down, shot through the chest.

  Gonzalez was returning to the ship.

  Vaughan, via Patti’s eyes, watched through the viewscreen as the Mexican came into view, running towards the ship pursued by the humanoids. Before Patti could stop her, Grendle leapt from her seat, snatched a rifle and ran to the exit. Patti followed, yelling.

  By the time Patti came to the exit, Grendle was kneeling at the top of the ramp, laying down a barrage of covering fire as Gonzalez zigzagged towards the ship through an obstacle course of fungal trunks. Patti thought he was going to make it, and realised she was screaming at him to hurry. Then her yells turned to sobs as a shot ripped through the Mexican’s lower back, exploding his entrails across the ground before him.

  Skip to: Patti beside Grendle, firing a rifle as the green men attacked. She called out a command to the ship’s core to break out the complement of combat AIs, and seconds later six silver spider-drones leaped over the two women and joined battle.

  Skip to: something hitting Jenny Grendle in the chest; Jenny turning to her lover with an almost beatific expression on her face as blood pulsed through her shattered ribs.

  Vaughan fought the tidal wave of the woman’s emotion, the pain of losing a lover...

  Then something knocked Patti off her feet; a projectile had slammed into her head. She felt a dull pain, out of all proportion to what she should be feeling as a piece of her skull, hinged on flesh, flapped forward, and obscured her vision as she toppled backwards.

  She was being carried rapidly, and she thought for a second that the green humanoids had got her. She saw a flash of silver, a scissoring glint of legs, as two spider drones hauled her back through the ship.

  And...

  A stray memory, evanescent... Vaughan strained to capture it.

  A voice. She’d heard a voice as she was dragged from the exit.

  A human voice...

  “We’ve got the ship!”

  And Patti’s last thought, on the threshold of death, as the combat drones reached the suspension chamber and eased her into the cold-sleep unit, was: The green creatures speak English...

  Vaughan cried out in pain. Patti Yuan slid towards oblivion, her mind full of grief at the death of the only person s
he had ever loved, at the terrible realisation of her own approaching end. It was as if he were being dragged down with her, sucked into the vortex of nothingness towards which the woman, seconds ago so full of life and vitality, was heading.

  He cried out again and forced himself upwards, a swimmer fighting the pull of a terrible tidal rip; he pulled away from her as blackness encroached, as everything she had ever known was reduced to absolute nothingness and Patti Yuan died.

  He released her hand and pushed himself from the slide-bed, fell to the floor on all fours and vomited as relief flooded through him, blessed gratitude that he was who he was, Jeff Vaughan and alive, and yet carrying within him the last memories of Patti’s death, memories that would haunt him until the day of his own inevitable end.